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User blog:TheRealG3rMan/Make Your Own TSFIA: Diving Into Hell!
So I haven't done anything Muv Luv related in a while and I want to write my own TSFIA (The short stories they pop into their Omnibuses every once in a while) because why not. I'm not the kind to retread over already touched material so I'd like to explore something a little fresh. So, to start with, I've got to figure out what individual or group I'm going to be focusing on. As an American, it makes sense to write from an American's perspective, as I lack the worldly knowledge to truly emulate a different culture's mannerisms and such. Some of that can be alleviated by research, but for a smaller project I think it's important not to let scope creep keep me from finishing by wasting all my time on wikipedia. So, the good ol' US of A. A very controversial nation in the Muv Luv universe, and because of that it makes for some great stories. Some might argue that Total Eclipse was meant to bring an American storyline to the table, but I'd argue Yuuya and the rest of the important American cast leaned way too much into Japanese culture for him to be all that sympathetic to an American audience. So, this time around I'd like to write a character that isn't torn between his two heritages and is instead very comfortable with his nationality since that isn't the main conflict of this story. So, we've got a generic American as our potential protag. What's next? Well, we need to make sure the little bit of world we are building within the existing universe is self-contained but plausible. Walls and other limitations are important in writing but there comes a point where too much is bad for your story. We know the USA loves getting its fingers in everyone's business, so let's do that to create some inherent conflict. We have our protagonist going somewhere and doing something that is going to piss off someone; whether that someone is an individual or an entire country remains to be seen, but a country seems like it would be more fun given the grander scale. And how does our protagonist get permission to do this? By being Special Forces, obviously. That's the easiest way to make your protagonist jump a few pegs on the cool guy scale is putting him in the elite unit. Of course, there is a difference between being 'elite', which it seems just about every group we follow in Muv Luv is, and actually being a special forces group. The Valkyries were a kind of special forces, but only for the sake of convenience; they needed a get out of jail free card to complete the operations Yuuko needed them to, but their training for the most part was pretty standard and they were essentially a suicide unit. We see some fleeting images of actual groundpounder special forces retaking Yukon Base with the Spetsnaz and Delta Force working together, which was cool and probably one of the few parts of Total Eclipse that didn't make me cringe concerning the painful representation of Soviet/US relations in a BETA world. Silvio operated as part of a presumably larger EU special forces group, and they even got black stealth paint on their F-5s to pull off the ensemble. Apart from that, plenty of units have been considered 'elite' but rarely play the traditional role of a special forces unit, since the reason they are elite is generally because they have survived X amount of sorties against the unstoppable alien horde. So let's try and represent an actual special forces group doing special forces things, rather than having a relatively normal unit assigned a similar mission that turns them into the suicide squad. Still not amazingly original, but still, this is supposed to be a short story and not some spanning epic trying to teach a grandiose theme. Still with me? Okay, so we have an American protag that is part of a special forces unit, a unit that makes use of both TSF and ground elements so that they can easily adapt and complete whatever the mission throws at them. We want this group to be a part of something that is for the good of the USA, maybe even the world (even if the rest of the world won't see it that way), and if word got out they were on this mission then heads would roll. To avoid treading over existing conflicts that have already been covered, or that deserve a lot more writing than I'm willing to invest, I'm going to focus on a little timeline I like to call The Day After. Here is where US pragmatism has sort of backfired as they not only ruined the world with their G-bomb strategy, a strategy meant to cut down on the cost of human lives during hive infiltrations, but also ruined their public image as the remaining nations want revenge against them. It's made even worse when the USA herself has been torn asunder and is under attack by not only the remnants of Canada and Europe, but the BETA themselves are sweeping up from the Pacific to wipe out what little is left of the habitable land on the West coast. To be even more of a special snowflake, I want to explore a little known branch of the US military that is entirely fictional, the U.S.S.C. The United States Space Corps, as described by this wiki, was formed in 1946 (a year before even the Air Force was created!) in order to "Represent US power in the endless frontier of space". With four divisions of their own shifted from the Army, along with 160 spacecraft to carry them, the Space Corps has quite a sizable force and is supposedly second only to the Army itself when it comes to funding. Not particularly surprising when you consider it was most likely the USSC that was put in charge of the handling and usage of all the G-bombs. But we don't care about the G-bombs this time; they already screwed up the world and had their five seconds of fame. We want to explore the other interesting part of the USSC, and that is the fact that they contain the US's compliment of Orbital Divers. These guys are the embodiment of the 'One-Way Trip' given that their main task is usually taking over a Hive, in which no Orbital Diver unit has ever been successful of completing. But wait, you ask, I thought we were trying to avoid becoming a suicide squad? Of course we are. I think it stands to reason that although Orbital Divers are most definitely going to be most useful when it comes to assaulting a BETA position given their usual tactics, their unique choice of infiltration makes these guys very attractive for some behind-enemy-lines missions. If even the BETA struggle to shoot down their landing shells before the TSFs can land, imagine the difficulty humans would have trying to do the same. And what humans would those be? Well, the French and Canadians, of course. The only other significant force that we know still exists are the Japanese, and they are on our side. At least, for now. Perfect targets for an attack considering the horrific atrocities they have committed against the US and Japan. Ambushing the European Front troops after they arrived on the East Coast, brutalizing the mostly defenseless populace of the American Northeast, capturing the White House and murdering the First Lady of the United States of America. That is plenty reason to authorize an attack on their soil. So, for a general timeframe, this will take place around the start of Chronicles 04 shortly after the United States Government learns of the French capturing the White House. So, early January 2006. This offers the perfect pretense to launch a retaliatory attack designed to weaken the French Canadian resolve to continue the costly war. Given the fact that it is already very difficult to communicate with HSSTs in space thanks to the effects of Operation Babylon, our hero doesn't necessarily have all the intel he'd like for his operation. We don't know all the details surrounding the events back on Earth, and apart from some rough landing coordinates, we don't really know what our target is. Most of our squadron is out of contact range or are otherwise incapable of making the drop, so just a single flight of TSFs are dropping in. On the ground, we plan to link up with a special forces unit from the Army already in place to help complete our objectives and give us more details on the target. Apart from the already intense conflict that is our protagonist is fighting against human opponents for the first time (outside of training), he will also have to learn that to win a war, you can't always play by the rules. His mission isn't just about sabotaging the enemy's military capability, but also ensuring that every citizen of theirs loses the will to fight. So for right now I'm thinking his targets might start out as something like a military base. He goes there, starts shooting up the parked TSFs, barracks, etc. Then he is ordered to destroy the warehouses where the military holds the rationed foodstuffs; given the fact that the entire population is starving to death, this is almost certainly a death sentence to thousands of civilians. Does he pull the trigger or does his conscience get the best of him? Next post I'll write the article itself, with some visuals attached. Considering these are spec ops units that are designed to be stealthy, and that the USSC has a close relationship with the Army, I'm thinking this small unit might field F-22A's alongside F-15SEs in order to get the upper hand in what are sure to be close quarter dogfights and to support stealth scenarios. Also, I never got around to it but the reason the title is called "Diving Into Hell" is because the unit is nicknamed the Helldivers. F-15SE.jpg Mecha 1 f22 em2.png|They'd probably use an all black scheme, similar to other spec ops aviation units. Category:Blog posts